


When They Sound the Last All-Clear

by warmommy



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Divorce, Drowning, F/M, Fluff, Guilt, Jealousy, Near Death Experiences, Oral Sex, Past Miscarriage, Rough Sex, Secrets, Semi-Public Sex, Slow-ish burn, Smut, Speirs stealing shit, Survivor Guilt, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2019-12-07 05:16:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18230420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warmommy/pseuds/warmommy
Summary: Ronald Speirs did many things during the war. He made you forget. He made you drink water. He saved your life. He left candy on top of your head. He questioned what the fuck he was doing. Maybe he could also begin to feel good again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the song, I'd suggest a listen ----> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdsH6c6T9lc
> 
> More to be found at warmommy.com :)

The rubble had settled for the most part. You kept wiping cakes of dust from your uniform, your gun, your hair–it wouldn’t come off of your face. The grease paint was still greasy, thanks to all this humidity, so thick the air could choke you itself, even without all that black smoke. This post was yours; not too close, but close enough to drag any man off the front, should this bizarre, macabre charade suddenly end. You tried to at least flick the particles away from the ends of your nostrils, but it only made it worse–all that crying you were trying not to do was making your nose run.

It wasn’t that you were scared of  _them_ , although you were, definitely. Two fragmented companies, yours lead by Lieutenant Speirs–of all the luck–against between thirty and forty Germans, with very little space between. You could hear them, as you often could, could catch some of what they were saying. ‘ _Oh, wo haben Sie denn das Messer gekauft? Ich brauche so etwas!’ ‘Meine Freundin hat mir Flöhe gegeben.’ ‘Spielt es lauter ab!’_

[They were playing music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdsH6c6T9lc). The Vera Lynn tune–not the same one everyone was always singing to fill the silence–the one about reuniting with the one that loves you when the war’s over…

They sang it, too. Poorly, heavily accented, slurring in nonce words. “Win they saaand the last all-claire…how happy, mine  _darling_ , we wheel be…”

Germans truly could weaponise  _anything_. What you once sang under your breath and hummed along with was drifting across the ruined streets. Every time the song ended, someone moved the needle to play it again. It was no accident, it was determination. Annihilation of the spirit. Somehow, this brought more fear and pain than a gun in your face. The message was twisted from its hopeful impartations. There would  _be_  no last all-clear.

“Can you understand them?”

The voice made you jump, and you quickly had to pull yourself together and seem all right, because it was him.

Speirs crouched down a few feet away and passed you a canteen. “Drink up, Y/N. I forget if it was you or the other nurse that could understand what they were saying.”

He could  _definitely_  see the telltale smears around your eyes and your nose, had definitely heard you sniffling when he was approaching. That man could hear anything and everything. Maybe he was going to be merciful and just ignore it.

You rubbed your face. “One of them just said his girlfriend gave him crabs.”

Speirs chuffed amusedly. “That your official diagnosis?”

“I hope they all have itchy crotches, then maybe they won’t shoot straight.”

“Something tells me Hitler has all his soldiers prepared for that eventuality,” he said, and seemed to settle in right where he was rather than continuing on whatever predetermined path he’d set his mind to, before. He was quiet for a minute, even ate something although it didn’t come from a wrapper, and it was too dark for you to tell  _what_  it was, exactly. “Think they know what she’s singing?”

Your heart sunk down, and your belly pulled it inward, towards your spine. “I don’t know if they understand all the words.”

“They certainly understand what they’re doing, though, don’t they?”

Your smile broke. Your lips tried on the shapes of various words, but never quite settled on the right ones to say, to explain the state you’d been in before he showed up, or that you were still struggling against it. You cleared your throat. “They do.”

“We’re prepared for a lot of things,” Speirs said, taking a drink now, himself. “But they don’t prepare us for Vera Lynn being the enemy.”

“She’s not the enemy,” you said, shaking your head.

“Right now, her voice is.”

“I wish they had some type of genuine joy that  _I_  could ruin,” you said suddenly. Your arms crossed when he said nothing and you leaned against some debris you felt was fairly stable.

He nudged you so you’d look at him, so you’d see that hard, crooked grin under the shadow of his helmet. “Attagirl, Lieutenant.”

You blinked dubiously. It wasn’t clear at all which part of that was most objectionable or unexpected. “ _Pardon_  me?”

“Aw, you didn’t like that?” Speirs reached in his front pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He put one between his lips and held the pack out to you. When you shook your head, he grinned again. “Aw, don’t tell me you’re–”

“I’m not scared that you’ll kill me if I smoke one of your cigarettes, I don’t smoke because it’s disgusting,” you said, pushing the pack and his hand away from yourself. “First of all,  _Lieutenant_ , it’s conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman to address a female service member in like manner–”

He licked his lips and bit into his smile. “Oh yeah,  _Lieutenant_? I’m a gentleman?”

“No,  _Lieutenant_ , not that you give a single itchy crotch about how to conduct yourself, or restraining yourself from provoking speech and gestures–”

“ _Lieutenant_ , are you preparing yourself to recite the entire code of military justice to me?” Speirs finally lit his cigarette and sat so that his knees touched yours. “What article is that?”

“Articles 117 and 133! And anyway–”

“It worked,  _Lieutenant_.” Speirs blew rings of smoke through the broken window in front of you.

You jerked your knee away from him. “ _What_  worked?  _Lieutenant_?”

“You’re not upset about the song anymore.”

After a moment of stammering, your shoulders slackened. “Well, damn it.”

“It  _is_ funny, though,” Speirs said, making himself good and comfortable, somehow, in the wreckage.

You drank from the canteen he offered. “What is?”

“Nobody  _ever_  asks me for a smoke. Not a single one. What’s even funnier, catching some of them talking about it and then offering it to them.”

You rolled your eyes again, scoffed, but a smiled played at the corner of your lips. “Article 117.”

* * *

It was amazing, how many people could fit on a Sherman tank, and the damn thing just kept rolling on. What was left of your platoon could all be squashed onto one, ass to ankles. Well, most folks were ass to ankles. Speirs put you up by the commander, and he sat so that he could lean back against your shins. He kept bumping the back of his helmet, letting it dig just a bit into your skin.

“Angel of death,” he said, fingering the letters stencilled on the cannon. “Pissed I didn’t get to that one first.”

You scoffed and didn’t look up from the letter you were bumpily composing. “You’re not the angel of death.” You nudged the back of his head with your knee. “You’re the angel of  _murder_.”

“Don’t try and flatter me, Lieutenant.”

“Are you trying to Article 117 me?”

“But I’m the angel of Article 118. Sorry, doesn’t work for me.”

“What? Are you threatening to Article 118 me?” You nudged the back of his head again, a grin in your voice. “I’d rather you Article 128’d me.”

“You know that I have no idea what that means.” Speirs pulled his pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket.

You handed him his lighter. “But you–”

“I only learned 117 and 133 because you keep accusing me of it, and 118 because it’s, you know, murder. I figure it’ll be on a military jurisprudence docket with my name on it, some day.”

“Jurisprudence is the philosophy of law. Your name will be on a military  _justice indictment_.”

Speirs grunted with grim displeasure. “If you were my subordinate, I’d just toss you over the front of this tank, let it roll over you.”

“Let Articles 117 and 128 co-mingle, get it over with? That gonna make your night, Speirs?” You shoved the letter you were writing into an envelope and scribbled the address on the front. “I can feel dirt and grit on my teeth. Sergeant Dash, how do you handle it?”

The tank commander looked down at you with contempt. “Can’t handle it, you can hoof it.”

Before you could respond, the tank rolled over a body. Speirs stood, using your knee for leverage and stability. He didn’t say anything, and you didn’t look to see the conversation of ire and contempt expressed in a gaze. After several seconds, his grip on your knee tightened, but the behemoth of steel plates was no longer quaking.

“Move over,” Speirs muttered gruffly, wedging himself to sit upon the cupola.

It was quiet, you realised. Not only had you, Speirs, and the commander stopped speaking, but all the chattering over the engines had come to a complete silence.

* * *

Your hair was finally dry, all except for the tips. Every inch of your body felt as if it held its weight in lead. You leaned back against the bristly bark of a French pine, stripped down to an olive green, GI-issued bra and trousers, the smell of the lake still soaked in, through it and through your skin.

There was strict light discipline in place, but Doc Roe, a medic from Easy, held up his flashlight, a Coleman stove giving the only other illumination.

“Your belly ain’t distended,” he muttered, putting away his instruments and bandages, There was nothing to remove, no wounds to clean and cover, hardly anything he could do at all, except fill you with aspirin. “Can’t do much for drownin’. Sorry.”

“I know,” you muttered, feeling like your larynx fluttered in tattered shreds inside your throat.

He kept his eyes to himself, but passed you a canteen. “Already you lived. Came back from the dead, risen to protect and shield life again.”

“Well, I feel like shit, Eugene,” you said, taking another burning gulp. “No, not that, I’m fine. I just fucked up. I fucked up bad, and I fucking hate it.”

He rolled up, put the kit inside his bag. You could tell he struggled with what he saw, and you were embarrassed, but it wasn’t as upsetting as having Speirs scream in your face.

“But you lived.”

You sighed, humbled. “Yeah, fuck. I’m sorry. I just hate letting my CO down.”

“Hm.” Roe frowned, but resumed what he was doing, preparing to leave. On your bed of pine needles, from a medical standpoint, you were fine. Your back and belly looked black and reddened, yes, but you were whole. He turned back after a few feet. “Ain’t really what I heard.”

“I hit the water, I drowned, I woke up and Speirs was knocking the shit out of me and screaming in my face.” You braced yourself on a jagged branch and tried slowly to stand. You always did find it impossible to stay in one place for very wrong. Drowned or not, broken skin bruising or not, there was shit to do. “My eyes really red?”

He nodded, still frowning. “Busted blood vessels from expelling all that water.”

You groaned. “Fan-fucking-tastic.”

“I heard he was the one that drug you out of the water,” Roe said quietly. “I heard he cut you out of the chute with a Luftwaffe dagger and shook you all around, trying to get you to wake up. Then he tried to beat the life back into you. Here you are. From all I hear, he’s always screaming when there’s shells in the air. They also say today was his worst day. Never ducked for cover one time, like he was trying to die, this time.” He shrugged and went on his way quick. It was clear he wanted to get away from the self-pitying nurse who fell out of the sky, drowned, and lived to fight again.

You reached for your shirt, your jacket, and let out a sharp cry of pain. Dressing again was  _difficult_ , but nights got cold in France, and although you trusted the men you served with, it never felt good to be out in the open.

It made no sense, what Roe had said, but everyone always lied and embellished about Speirs. You always felt as if the truth was more obvious to you, as if there was more clarity to him, the things he did, in your perspective. That was bullshit, though, and you were even more angry at yourself for it.

You didn’t sit down again until 00:30. Your hands were once again stained with the blood of those more worthy than you, those whom you’d failed so far, this day.

None more than Lieutenant Speirs, though.

“You need to go to sleep soon.”

You tried not to let it show, how surprised you were to have him walk up like any other night. You fiddled with the paper pack of candy-coated chocolate in your hand and held it out to him.

“That your move?” When he sat down closer to you, closer to the little glowing embers that made the pathetic campfire, you could see streaks of blood among the grease paint that obscured his features. It was clearly not his own. “That gonna make your night, Y/N?”

You smiled to yourself. Even your eyelashes hurt, even the pores of your scalp hurt. You’d still fucked up, you’d still managed to steer yourself into a seiche, and though the motives of your commanding officer were more muddled than ever, you smiled to yourself.

* * *

Speirs pushed open the door of the room where you were staying. It was a shitty inn, but it was a room, and no one bitched about you keeping a room to yourself, especially not when you mentioned something about going to pick up sanitary napkins. He had a liquorice rope hanging from the corner of his lips, and he sat down in the chair across from yours. He did not know what you were writing, and he did not like that feeling. “What’s that?”

“My divorce papers,” you muttered, your pen slashing like a knife as you flipped through pages and signed line after line.

He remained composed. “You don’t wear a ring.”

“Yeah, well, my marriage is over,” you said, giving a final flourish, the killing blow that etched Tony off of your GI life insurance. “I don’t know who to give the ten grand to.”

“Ten grand for what?” Speirs asked quietly.

“For when I die.”

His expression soured, and he bit through the liquorice rope, chewing it like an animal bone. “You planning on dying, Y/N?”

“We’re all going to die,” you said, mirroring the creed he lived by. “None of us is making it home. Our deaths are someone else’s fortune, isn’t that what you said?”

The chair creaked as his weight shifted. Everything felt as if it was shifting, but he was just looking at you, biting off pieces of black liquorice now and then. “No children?”

“I had a miscarriage at Toccoa,” you said. You slid the paperwork into separate yellow envelopes, licked the seals. “Three weeks in. Didn’t know about it before, kept it a secret so I wouldn’t get medical discharge or pity.”

“Not a secret now,” he said after a moment of extended silence, the air filled with a heaviness you hadn’t meant to impart.

You chuffed out a laugh. “Like anyone would believe you, Speirs.”

He bit into a fresh rope of liquorice, smiled at you. “I left my girlfriend, he leave you?”

“No, you dick,” you said, his blunt irreverence eliciting real laughter, this time. “No, it was over when I enlisted, we just didn’t say it yet, because that’d be ‘unpatriotic’ of him. What’s the matter, you finally realise how disgusting that garbage is?”

“No, black liquorice is God’s candy,” he said absently, his face contorting again. “He wouldn’t serve?”

“It’s complicated, and black liquorice is Satan’s asshole.”

“You don’t like cigarettes, you don’t like bread, you don’t like liquorice…” He stood up and set one solitary rope of disgusting candy on top of your head. “ _That_  is why your husband left you.”

“Will you get the fuck out of here before an Article 118 occurs?”

He laughed, and it was shocking in the best way. You’d heard him laugh before, sarcastic scoffs, snorts of derision. This was clear as a bell, just heartfelt amusement.

You threw the piece of candy at his retreating form, smiling to yourself, and gathered your paperwork to mail.

* * *

The white lotus bloomed, silk petals unfolding smoothly against the dark water. He was still drifting, drifting down, and he was  _cold_ , but he was sweating through his jump gear. The pressure of the straps across his torso threatened to snap his clavicle in two, and the pops in the air followed flashes. Black smoke, red smoke, white smoke, blue smoke. He was hurtling feet-first into hell, but all he was afraid of was that  _flower_.

A twin blossom unfurled twenty yards away from the first. Ron tugged at his rear right steering line, held the other steady, and the wind pulled him exactly on course, far enough from his objective, but not far enough to change his course of action. He wasn’t sure if there was a distance that was far enough, for that.

The balls of his feet first, lean in to the calf, the thigh, hip, side. He skidded through shell casings long spent, pine needles, dirt, and sand, freed himself with a slash of silver and a gnash of his teeth. No time for unlatching, and when he pulled the strap of his rifle over his shoulder, he let it fall to the ground, didn’t hold it in his hands. He’d never unpacked so fast. Every piece plummeted, and it felt as if the soles of his boots were already crunching over rolling pebbles, sinking into wet sand. He dove into the cold, and it swallowed him whole.

Ron swam to the very thing he feared most, unsure of whether it was the lotus or the water that suffocated him more. Beneath the lotus, suspended there, was a mermaid. Her hair and skin glowed with the faint cast of light that pierced the veil of the water, claggy, cloying, and the tiny bubbles clinging to her hair, her skin. Maybe she was an angel, her lips parted as if softly singing, her eyes closed. Maybe she was Aphrodite, come on her crimson shell; maybe he was a Lotus Eater.

No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no, no, no,  _no_. Unacceptable.

His arms began to burn, lashing out through the water, until he had this mermaid, this angel, this goddess, maybe even a demon, had her about the waist and dragged himself up for air. Ron surfaced beneath the lotus, its wet petals clinging to the contours of his face, hers as well, as he hoisted her up.

All he could see was white, white silkiness, and when his second kick of adrenaline ran through his veins, he began furiously treading towards the sounds of gunfire in the distance, certain that was where his pack was left, certain he would be able to breathe life back into the precious thing he dragged along, relentlessly.

A great  _roar_  pierced through Ron’s ears now, and he didn’t realise until his boots once again slipped on slick algae, padded through catching sand, crashed across rolling pebbles, that it had been his own blood, rushing to his head, like holding a seashell to his ear, as a boy, at the beach with his father.

“Y/N.”

Ron remembered now, the creature suspended beneath the lotus petals–or were they heavy wings?–no, they were neither.

“Y/N!” Ron was still gulping for air, and he dropped her to the sand long enough to draw that Kraut knife from his belt and rip through the chute. As soon as he could pull her through it, he did.

She had not been struggling for breath when he reached her. There’d been no bubbles escaping her throat. How long had that been? Thirty, forty seconds ago? Less, longer than that?

Ron seized her shoulders hard, throttled her. “Y/N. Y/N, stand up.  _Move_. Stand up, lock up! Stand up,  _hook up_!”

No. That always worked, and it was always funny. She  _always_ jumped awake, and the look of realisation on her face always leapt to anger, and he’d still be laughing, backing away from her flailing hands.

Ron shook and shouted with frustration, frustration and fear. He put her on her side and started whacking the back of his fist against her back, like his mom would do when he got something caught in his throat he needed to cough up. He grew more and more frantic, increasingly desperate, until he put her on her stomach and started pumping both fists into her diaphragm. Dead, she was dead, she was gone, she was dead, dead, because  _he_  hadn’t been fast enough, because  _he_  had told her to jump before  _him_.

He tasted blood in his mouth, and he realised with a start that he’d been screaming himself raw. A split second later, water gushed down the sides of her face and she was spasming, violently. Ron pushed her onto her side again and watched, still screaming at her, close to her, as water, _so much water,_  came rushing through her lips,  _so tinged with blue_. The choking led to gagging, and Ron started to shake her again,  _still screaming_  at her.

It wasn’t supposed to matter. This dawned on him as soon as she sat up, weakly, cringing because of the pain spiking all throughout her body. It wasn’t supposed to matter, because he was dead, she was dead, they were all dead, they were all  _going_  to die, so why had it mattered  _so much_  to risk  _everything_ to save a dead woman?

“Lieutenant Speirs?” She was shivering, still spitting out bits of water, here and there.

Ron grabbed the back of her pack–he hadn’t thought to cut it off before–and dragged her to where he could hear others shouting. “Medic! Medic!”

As soon as he got her behind the cover of a French pine, Ron grabbed up his rifle and ran full force, full speed into the dusty cloud of action, micro-aerosols of blood, carbon, fear, and death.

 

Before he knew exactly what he was doing, Ron was sitting up at the edge of the bed he’d rented. There were five other men in pallets all across the floor, because space was so limited, and there was no way he was forcing men to sleep out in the damp night air if they didn’t have to. That was the sixth night in a row he’d dreamt about pulling you out of that lake. Right now, the questions, the discomfort, the inner turmoil of what it meant to revere life again so suddenly, they didn’t concern him as much as seeing that you were still  _alive_. He stepped through the maze of bodies, breathing ones, on the floor, and moved quietly down the corridor until he came to your door. The door was locked, but that sort of thing never stopped him. He always had a bobby pin and a shank handy.

“Y/N,” he said quietly as he entered the room, carefully closing the door. “Stand up, hook up.”

Your body jolted, and you scowled at him. “The first time I sleep in a fucking bed in God knows how long and you come in here and play pranks on me?”

He smiled softly and padded across the room.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Ron, what the fuck is wrong with you? Why aren’t  _you_  asleep, you baggy-eyed, sticky-fingered, stupid–”

Ron sat down beside you and placed his hand over your mouth. “Ssssh, sssh, shut uuup.” His smile grew, and he felt like a maniac. His heart thumped, and he let his hand slip away. “I’m so happy you didn’t die.”

You blinked at him, unamused. “Why thank you, Ron.  _Get out_.”

Ronald Speirs lifted you up, pulled you into his lap, and kissed you. He’d done entirely too much questioning of himself, lately, about his beliefs. It had been a long, long, long time since anything had felt this good. Who gave a shit? For the moment, he was done thinking, and it was  _perfect_.


	2. Chapter 2

All bleariness, all anger, all  _thought_  drained from your mind just as the colour drained from your face. You tried to think of which Articles this violated, but he didn’t want to hear any damn jokes. He was just looking at you, waiting patiently, seemingly unperturbed by your reactions so far. Well, maybe there was a reason for that, you tried to reason with your racing thoughts. Just because he did something one time did not mean he wanted anything else whatsoever, or to ever do it again.

The best approach with Ron, you’d found, was just being direct. 

“Why’d you do that?” you asked.

“Wanted to,” he said immediately.

You nodded. Of course it wasn’t direct  _enough_. Of course not, this was Ron. “Are you planning on doing it again?”

He nodded, a little smile gracing the corners of his lips. “A lot.”

You couldn’t help it. The full-body exhaustion of recovery and being in constant motion and worry was taking its hold again. You were still in a real bed for the first time in a long while, and your eyelids grew so heavy, it was difficult to hold them open. “One more time.”

He pressed his lips into a line and shook his head.

“Ron, I’m so tired…”

“Oh.” He blinked. “I thought you meant at all. Okay. Move over.”

“Move…?” You edged off his lap, and when you didn’t move further, Ron put you down on the other side of the bed.

“Mhm. Move.” He made himself quite comfortable, too, you felt, shifting you around, pulling the blanket. 

“Ron, no, you can’t stay in here, what are you doing?”

“Staying in here. I got reasons.” He slept on his stomach all his life, but his last girlfriend had complained about how much he snored, so now he was on his back, his eyes closed. “For what reasons shouldn’t I? Probably stupid ones.”

You felt almost as if you were intruding. He just looked so different. You collected yourself and went against your instinct to push his hair away from his forehead. “Someone could come in here.”

He shook his head. “No. People know who’s staying in this room. I think I forgot to lock the door, but if anyone tries to come in, I will cut off their thumbs. Problem solved. Lieutenant, aren’t you tired?”

“I don’t want anyone to see you walking out of here.”

“They won’t. And why don’t you?”

“Because then the men will say that we’re–”

“They already do.”

It felt like he’d hit you in the stomach again, like he had when he’d pulled you out of the water. So you’d felt. So you’d heard. Your eyes went wide, but he kept you from sitting up, simply shaking his head. “Ron, what are you talking about? Why do they think that? Why wouldn’t I have heard anything about that? That’s not funny.”

“Nothing funny about it. Young guys with nothing better to do are gonna assume that the man closest to the woman is sleeping with her. Every time. It has nothing to do with you or what you do, it has very little to do with me, just fortunate that they do happen to think it  _is_  me.”

“You’re full of both bullshit  _and_  yourself.”

“Everything I said is true, Lieutenant. I don’t lie to you. It’s a good thing because nobody fucks with you.” Ron pulled you over so that your ear was right near his lips. “And they all know I’d make good on every single word I said.” You could feel his lips form the bow of a smirk. He could hear you, how your heart was beating, how you swallowed. He bit the shell of your ear just barely. “Wanna know what I told them?”

You swallowed and tried to find your thoughts again. You couldn’t. “Oh, fuck you.”

He laughed, squeezed your hip, kissed you again. Just once. Just like you’d said. 

He snored for five hours straight, but you didn’t say a thing. 

 

* * *

 

The next day, clean, fresh uniforms were passed around, and you took a shower with the few other women of the company. It wasn’t hot, but the water wasn’t quite so limited. You scrubbed your scalp like never before, used a pumice stone and lye soap to slough off dirt, sand, sweat, and the ever-present traces of blood that were difficult to wash away in the field. It sluiced off in dirty pink cascades. 

Even if there wasn’t much of a time limit, you didn’t want to stay under the spray of water longer than you had to.

After changing into the  _clean, so clean_  new uniform waiting for you, you went back to your rented room to pack up your go bag ahead of mobilisation. When you opened it, you were baffled at first, but then you smiled. Four extra pairs of socks, two more shirts, a wool hat, long underwear, gloves…so many stolen goods.

The door slammed into its frame behind you, and your heart raced. You definitely knew who it was, and he definitely did not belong there.

“Ron, are you predicting cold weather, or do you know something I don’t?” You turned around and his arms were  _full_ of K-ration boxes. “Someone might’ve seen you coming in here.”

“I don’t care,” he said, dumping the boxes on the small desk. His hair was still damp, and his uniform was starched and spotless.

You lifted a brow and smiled at him. “You want to divvy those up  _now_?”

There was an extensive system of trading between the two of you. The little four-packs of cigarettes found in each box all went to Ron, for instance, and he always gave every piece of spearmint or cinnamon gum to you, in return. He hated lemonade, so you took those and he took the orange powders. Even more than getting the stuff you wanted, though, you liked the simple act of sitting down to trade pieces with him. 

He shook his head and took a few careful, measured steps toward you. When he got close enough, you decided to take a calculated risk. 

“Thank you for your thievery,” you said softly, your hands on his face. You closed your eyes and kissed him for the first time. He was warm, smelled good, and–he was lifting you up, suddenly, groaning against your mouth. He didn’t open his eyes when you did, and he didn’t pull away, either. “Ron!”

“Don’t have to,” he whispered, his own hands squeezing at your sides. “But God only knows if I’ll ever be this clean again.”

Bursts of excitement like fireworks or arms batteries bombarded inside your chest and you kissed him a little harder. “I don’t think we’ve got a lot of time.”

“Worried I won’t take care of you?” He pressed you down against the shaky little bed, knee firmly planted between your thighs. He nipped at your lip the same way he did your ear the night before, and, face bare inches from yours, produced one of those smiles. “Nobody’s ever made you come like I will.”

Bold of him to assume any man had ever tried to make you come before, but you didn’t say that. You hadn’t had sex since you’d left your husband, but you didn’t say that, either.  You just welcomed the weight and touch of another person, happy that it was  _this_ person. It would have been very hard to turn down, very hard to deny the level of attraction you’d felt since he’d made his own humanity apparent the night those Germans sang that song. 

It was a shame there  _wasn’t_ more time, though. Leaning down on top of you, he kissed you like a starving beast until it was hard for either of you to sustain a single breath. Somewhere in the midst of this, he’d gotten his hand inside your pants, his fingers in your underwear. He made some noise of satisfaction, caught between a chuckle and a growl, because you were already wet. 

“Goddamn it, there’s so much I wanna do,” he whispered frustratedly, moving from your swollen lips to your ear. He swallowed. You could feel his throat bobbing. “Your thighs shake every time I touch your clit. It’s the sweetest thing. You’re gonna come soon, and then I’m gonna fuck you, and then, today, every single time I think about my cum on your thigh, I’ll start to think about what I’m gonna do to you tonight.”

The tension inside your body mounted with every breath and syllable, and then it was all flashing, like neon lights, flickering like the silver screen. You tried not to think of it like a war, like a battle, but the same adrenaline rush came to mind. Fighting an enemy felt like  _this_ , if you were winning.

You saw him smiling like a proud demon the next time you were able to open your eyes. 

 

* * *

 

That man just did not give one solitary shit. 

It took no time at all for the skeletal remains of Dog company to jam the last pieces of the puzzle together, because Ron had no shame and hid nothing. You waited and waited for the hammer to fall from your superior officers, but it never came, or hadn’t yet. 

Four more men died at Bloody Gulch. 

You tried  _so hard_  to save Private Bergman’s life. You tried to save every man’s life, of course, even had dreams about reaching into a dark pool and pulling them above the surface, dragging them up from the depths and back to the world of the living. 

Horace Bergman was eighteen years old, he had an English girlfriend named Darla, a mother named Lorena, and, from what you’d heard, a baby on the way. He caught some pieces from a shell blast in the gut, and it had  _looked_  bad, but everything was in his favour, aside from having shrapnel in his belly. No major blood vessels nicked, intact intestines, minor bleed from the spleen, no apparent trauma to the liver. 

You could feel the deep pulse emanating from his aorta. He lost his senses about fifteen seconds after administering a morphine syrette, but really, that wasn’t uncommon. When another medic opened up, he joined you and monitored other tasks while you carefully removed the pieces of metal from Bergman’s abdominal cavity with a sterile set of surgical forceps, dropping them onto a dressing beside him. Guys liked to see what medics pulled out of them; it gave them a greater sense of victory over death, over the enemy, to see what had torn their bodies open and still failed to kill them. 

A few little things began to add together. Slowly, Bergman started to let out short, punchy breaths, which got faster, then slower, then weaker, again. You looked at his hands and his fingernails had a faintly blue cast underneath. When Bergman tried to grab your blood-soaked arm, you told the other medic, with alarm, that he must be hurting, that the morphine must somehow be wearing off. Before that medic (old Gene Roe again, as it turned out, you hadn’t even noticed until then) could pop the cap off of another syrette, Bergman began to gasp.

He was looking right up at your face. It wasn’t pain that was making him reach for your hand, try to pull it out of his belly. He wanted you to hold his.

“Mama,” he gasped, bloody spittle bubbling around the corners of his mouth. “Mama, Mama, Mama, I…”

“See what you can do, Roe,” you said softly, carefully extracting your hands, carefully holding Bergman’s in yours.

He wasn’t the first to call you Mama, or some variation of it, as he stood on the edge of death and prepared to step over, and he most certainly would not be the last. If Roe had been thinking he could do any better, you didn’t know, but  if he had, he soon saw for himself that he couldn’t. 

Sometimes, no matter how good the care, no matter how good the medicine, no matter how apparently positive the prognosis, men died.

Sometimes, no matter how good the care, no matter how good the medicine, no matter how apparently positive the prognosis,  _boys_  died.

“Mama, Mama…”

You squeezed his hand and just kept looking him in the eye. What the movies never mentioned was how  _long_  it took to die, even from terrible injuries. Soldiers would lay in bloody battlefields for hours with their bellies shredded, screaming all the while. 

There was something somewhere that you and Roe couldn’t see, that you would never have been able to, and never would have been able to fix on the field. Even if he’d been ported to an aid station first thing, he wouldn’t have made it there. It took only seven minutes for Horace Bergman to die, start to finish, with hours in between the seconds that ticked by.

His grip on your hand went from feeble to non-existent, and he died believing he had his mother by his side. You wondered how long it would take before his death was reported to Lorena Bergman. 

Now, hours later, the cicadas filled the night are with an anxious song, and you could a dark red sheen over your skin, accompanied by a sickly penny smell. The days events were sobering, but not devastating, but that itself felt terribly wrong, created a restless stirring in your chest, your soul.

You lifted yourself up with a sigh. “Pearson, I’ll be back in five minutes.”

He looked up from his magazine and held his toothpick in the corner of his mouth. “Where you going?”

“To fuck your brother.”

Petty, yes, irresponsible, yes, but you didn’t like telling any of the men when you planned on being the slightest bit naked, and you figured the lake was still warm enough to jump in, scrub some of the blood off, and jump out again. It wasn’t far, it wouldn’t take long, and it wasn’t as if it was hygienic to have an ever-present coating of blood, however diluted from previous washing. 

“It’s not funny when you joke about fucking someone’s brother,” Ron said, approaching from the west. 

You jumped like a cartoon cat, sighed frustratedly at him. “It’s not funny when you follow me around, or when you pop out of nowhere. Someday that’s going to get you shot.”

He shrugged. “My girlfriend is a nurse.”

“That’s not funny, either,” you snapped. “That’s  _really_  not fucking funny. Don’t joke about how reckless you are. It’s like you’re  _trying_  to get killed.”

Ron wasn’t the bickering sort, he was an ignore-the-problem sort, so he didn’t chase that rabbit. When you realised he wasn’t going to say anything, you tried not to seem hurt and angry about how willing he was to die. Acting on that, you pursued your earlier trajectory towards the local body of water, and Ron followed after.

“What are you doing? Don’t say fucking my brother. I don’t even have one.”

“Keep an eye out for me,” you said in a much less confrontational tone. You pulled your shirt over your head. “I’m going to jump in the lake.”

Something tugged you backward, and it was so completely odd and out of character that you didn’t realise Ron was dragging you away by your upended shirt. 

You pulled it back down again and twisted around so that you could push him away. “What the hell is wrong with you? That  _hurt_. No, Ron, fuck you, don’t touch me.” He had never, ever once hurt you before, and it made your belly feel icy. “Lieutenant Speirs, step away.”

“I didn’t mean to,” he said, although he did not step away, but rather reached forward and tugged you up to him, front to front. “Don’t call me that. That’s not what you call me.”

You counted to five and let out a deep breath. Calmer, with more clarity, but still pissed. “Why would you do that?” 

“I want you to hit me in the face right now.” He pulled the brass knuckles you were required to carry on your person at all times from one of your pockets. “Put this on and hit me. I didn’t mean to hurt you, now hit me for it. It’s fair.”

“Quit being weird,” you said, taking them back and replacing them. He was upset by his own actions. Ron Speirs was upset by one of his own actions. “Stop it, Ron, stop.”

“I never saw you without your shirt on,” he said after a few moments of looking at you. “All that on your stomach. Does it still hurt?”

You brushed your fingertips lightly against your abdomen. “Okay. Do you want to make me feel better? Do you want to feel better about yanking me backward? What the hell happened when I drowned? You haven’t even said it once, you haven’t talked about it at all, Doc Roe was the one who told me what happened, and who knows if what he heard was the truth?”

This time, he hesitated too long to speak.

“Why did I even sleep with you?” you asked aloud. “Why do I care so much about whether or not you like me?”

Ron softened his grip on your waist. He never looked away from you, was staring you dead in the eye. “I love you. A tailwind pushed you towards the water and a downdraft pulled you right into it. I had just missed both when I jumped. I didn’t get taken with you. I had to get to you. When I did, I didn’t accept that you were already dead. I took you back to shore with me and I don’t remember very much after that. I just know that I somehow got you to breathe again. I knew I did it violently. I didn’t want you to jump into a lake again.”

Much like everything he said, his words were procedural, like checking off items on a list, like he was giving you a report. There was no tremble in his voice, it didn’t break. It was nothing like a movie whatsoever, nothing like an impassioned declaration of love in a novel. He gave you facts like a hand of cards, fanned out in front of you, and now he waited to see yours.

“I don’t have anything clever to say,” you said softly.

Ron shook his head. “You never do.”

“I love you. I think you’re really brave and that’s probably why that was so easy for you to say and why it’s so hard for me, because I’m not, I’m really scared, even though you essentially drew first in a duel, but it wouldn’t be fair not to.”

He shook his head again. “It’s not a duel. I don’t think it’s about being brave. You don’t owe me shit, especially not the truth.”

You let out a long sigh and rubbed your eyes. “I like everything you say, even though I have no idea what possesses you to say any of it. I don’t understand the way that your mind works. Having a conversation with you is like walking through a maze, but instead of just being really difficult, there’s also mirrors everywhere and someone set you on fire. Listen, Ron, I only meant I was going to hop in the water and get some of this blood off me. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Does it still hurt?”

“No. It kind of pinched. It was more startling, than anything,” you muttered, and paused for a brief moment before pulling your shirt off, successfully this time. “I never got to see you naked, either.”

Ron dropped his things, unzipped his jacket. He followed you to the bank, shucking off clothes as he did, leaving a trail.


	3. Chapter 3

“Hey, Lieutenant Y/N, have you seen Lieutenant Speirs?”

You didn’t recognise the voice beyond your tent, but it sounded like one of the replacements whose names you hadn’t learned. Or, you had to assume that it was, it wasn’t as if you hadn’t heard every single voice in your own company and others screaming for help, for themselves or otherwise. You would hear this one do the same, too, if he was lucky enough to live long enough to do so.

Ron tightened his arms around your thighs just barely, didn’t raise his head at all. He was happy where he was, with his tongue circling lazily around your clit, spreading with it a fresh wave of tingling warmth. You could’ve sworn you heard a soft chuckle, could feel the breath touch your skin.

Of course he wasn’t going to help.

“What’s your name, trooper?” It took several seconds too many for you to force out that string of syllables. You bit your lip, hand curling around a fist of dirt.

“O-Oh, I’m Private First Class Witherspoon, ma’am, third platoon. Uh, I’m looking for—”

“What do you need, Witherspoon? Lieutenant Speirs isn’t your commanding officer, Lieutenant Richter is your commanding officer. Lieutenant Richter is not here.” You struggled with all your weak-willed might not to let any other sounds escape.

Ron, whose will was made of something far from the galaxy you lived in, wherever it was that he came from, this veritable pussy-eating god from beyond the stars was trying everything he could to thwart you, break you, make you give yourself away.

“You’d better tell him to get out of here quick,” he said, not quite full volume, but  _still_. Nothing Ronald Speirs had ever done in his life was an accident, you were convinced. “You’re close.  _Any_  second now…” He punctuated that statement with a long, carefully placed lick with the flat of his tongue. “You’re gonna come so hard and Private First Class Whatever-The-Fuck is gonna hear you scream…”

“I will  _not_  scream,” you whispered stiffly, and oh, what a mistake, what a splendid goddamn error of judgment, challenging the most difficult and stubborn person you’d ever known not to make you come so hard that you would scream. Your eyelids cinched shut, your teeth created indentions on the backs of your knuckles. Fricatives and sibilants punctuated the soft gasps of your lip, the music of fucking.

“Ma'am?”

“Do you have a valid goddamn reason to be bothering me during the four hours I get to fucking sleep today?” you shouted, and before you even finished speaking, there came a stammered apology and shuffling of boots skidding on dirt to flee.

In all the nickel romance novels that your aunt read (which you subsequently stole and read), an orgasm was never named, nor was it described in any detail matching reality. It was nothing like picking a flower, or drinking sweet wine. Those things sounded nice, but they weren’t anything like the real McCoy.

The real deal was a sharp arch of your spine and the feeling of the grit of the earth sinking underneath your short fingernails as your hand dug into it for something to grasp. The real deal was fluttering chaos and madness, beginning with a tremble between your legs and radiating from that place, the heat stretching into sin. An orgasm in warfare was biting your lip sharply enough to taste pennies just so that no one could hear, even though everyone already knew.

You grabbed your helmet from where it rested a few feet away and slammed it against the ground, just for some kinetic release of energy that  _wasn’t_  shouting. That was what he  _wanted_ , but not what he was going to get. You whispered his name piteously and tried to push him away, thighs closing of their own volition, but he made a sound like a soft growl and kept them wedged apart.

“Not done with you yet.” Ron kissed the inside of your thigh, the warm, soft skin. “I told you nobody’s ever gonna make you come like I do.”

A second orgasm in warfare was borne of another person’s desperation. Where his desperation came from, you still didn’t know, couldn’t quite pinpoint, but you knew it meant he wanted to live, that he cared that you did, too. The second came easier, faster, a matter of a few short minutes under stale-smelling canvas. Your heels dug into the hard ground, and you heard that little chuckle again.

“Open your eyes,” he said after the longest grace period his own impatience and arousal could stand for. “Y/N, open your eyes. Look at me.” He was hovering over you, still hadn’t even freed himself from those standard-issue trousers. He squeezed one of your breasts in one hand and he seemed to be waiting…

“Oh, damn.” You closed your eyes and tried catching your breath. “I specifically told you that you could, Ron, before you started to scramble my brains.”

“Such an asshole, right?” The sound of his zipper sliding down met your ears. Such an innocuous onomatopoeia,  _zip_ , turned lurid and lascivious between his thumb and forefinger. Ron took your chin between his fingers next, made you look up at him when his cock slid against your skin and then inside you. “Wanting to make sure you still want me. What a dick move. Y/N, don’t look away from me, goddamn it.”

You laughed, and didn’t manage to catch your breath. Being fucked by Ron was a little like running up Currahee: three miles up, three miles down, your heart racing, your abdominals constantly pressing inward, never allowing much expansion in the lungs. He sounded the same as he did, back then, panting, growling, fighting his way through rigid muscles and straining tendons to make it to the top and back again.

It also wasn’t the same at all, though, because right now, someone was looking you in the eyes, and what you were doing wasn’t a literal uphill struggle. So many times, the two of you had made that run in the same cohort, and thought only of how to survive it. For now, thoughts of survival were banished. His dog tags came loose from the inside of his shirt and clattered down against yours.

No, no. Being fucked by Ron Speirs was like nothing but  _getting fucked by Ron Speirs._

“Don’t look away,” he murmured tersely–he knew it was getting harder for you to hold your eyes open. His chest pressed down against yours, and your dog tags mingled closer together, the chains plinking in rhythm with the hastened snapping of his hips. “Please, don’t.”

This was how to make Ron Speirs feel wanted. Learning how to do that was tantamount to learning some form of magic, itself. It took care, and cunning, but it was worth it to see the way his pupils would dilate, as they were now…to hear the same fricatives and sibilants, the music of fucking sung at a different register…


End file.
